Monthly Archives: August 2003

The mini-crisis over the display of a stone monument to the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court building is over, I guess, as the monument was removed today. On the radio a couple of days ago I heard some commentators who thought it was terrible that neither President Bush nor, especially, Attorney General Ashcroft had made any public statement on the controversy. Not surprisingly, neither of them wanted to »

Jack Kelly in the Washington Times argues that things are actually going well in Iraq. Kelly, quoting Ayad Rahim in the Washington Times, argues that “except for the isolated contract killings and sabotage, the country is calm and experiencing improved conditions day by day. A general who previously served in Kosovo said things are happening in Iraq after three months that didn’t happen after 12 months in Kosovo.” Kelly also »

My friend Craig Harrision called my attention to this week-old piece from WorldNetDaily by Michelle Malkin about Cruz Bustamante’s ties to the racist Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (Aztlan being essentially the southwest portion of the U.S. which the Movement hopes to reconquer for Mexico, or something). Bustamante was a member when he was a student in the 1970s. Rocket Man and I have, perforce, some sympathy for the notion »

It had been a while since I heard from my conservative cousin from New York. But he clearly hasn’t lost his sense of outrage at liberal hypocrisy, as is evident from his latest dispatch: “Another example of how the liberals posture about helping the poor while pushing programs that make it more difficult for the working stiff: Today’s New York Times reports that the price of milk in the City »

The excellent No Left Turns directed me to this piece from the New Yorker by Adam Gopnik about the ascent of the anti-anti-Americans in Paris. In Parisian terms, this “ascent” does not mean that anti-Americanism is not the prevalent view in France. It means only that anti-Americanism has become boring — “a routine of resentment, a passionless Pavlovianism. . .a muttered feeling [with] no life as an idea or an »

On this date in 1965 the Beatles called on Elvis at his Bel Air mansion while they were in town for two shows at the Hollywood Bowl. The meeting was preceded by high-level negotiations between Brian Epstein on behalf of the Beatles and Colonel Parker on behalf of Elvis. Even though Elvis was in the middle of his living Hollywood death — he was filming “Paradise, Hawaiian Style,” while his »

Quite a few years ago I read a wonderful book by John McPhee called The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed. It chronicled the efforts of a group of visionaries–or cranks, take your pick–to bring back lighter than air flight, i.e., dirigibles. Their case was so persuasive that I have looked in vain for the return of this technology for many years. Now, Brendan Miniter reports in the Wall Street Journal that blimps »

The Sun is the only newspaper in England, as far as I know, that has aggressively backed Tony Blair in the BBC scandal. This morning the Sun reported on yesterday’s testimony of top intelligence official John Scarlett in the Hutton inquiry: “Spook Clears King of Spin”. Scarlett testified that he was responsible for the Iraq dossier that was the subject of the false BBC report and that the BBC’s account »

Alan Dershowitz has one very powerful column on the crucial role played by the United Nations in facilitating the growth of the terrorist movement that landed last week on the doorsteps of the UN itself: “Terror stings its pal, the UN.” Here’s the nub of it: “For more than a quarter of a century, the U.N. has actively encouraged terrorism by rewarding its primary practitioners, legitimating it as a tactic, »

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday. Hugh’s blog provides two summaries of the interview — the highly misleading one presented by the San Francisco Chronicle, in which Arnold “enrages Republican loyalists,” and the one that Hugh says would have been written by a fair-minded reporter, in which Arnold embraces Ronald Reagan and President Bush, promises to repeal the car tax if possible, and recognizes that Californians are overtaxed across-the-board. »

The text of the president’s speech tonight to the convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting in St. Louis is available here. The speech is incredibly warm, moving, and powerful. Here’s my favorite part: “On Memorial Day last year, I visited the military cemetery at Normandy, and saw the grave of one of the founders of the American Legion, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. When Roosevelt landed with the »

No U.S. Senate races are being run this year, but it is a crucial time for determining the outcome of next year’s races. This is because the two parties are busy recruiting candidates. The Washington Post reports another Republican recruiting set-back, this time in Nevada, where popular Republican Congressman Jim Gibbons has said he will not challenge Sen. Harry Reid. Since Reid won by only a few hundred votes last »

Charles Krauthammer explains that the real issue when it comes to multilateral peace-keeping in Iraq is not obtaining U.N. involvement, but ending U.N. obstruction. Countries such as India and Russia say they will contribute troops only if the U.N. passes a resolution explicitly authorizing the sending of peace-keepers. Such forces would be valuable, in Krauthammer’s view, because they could handle low level security assignments, while our forces hunt down the »

At least the Jerusalem Post’s Saul Singer is offering observations and making projections based on a candid understanding of the facts. I’m not anywhere near as sure as he seems to be that the road map has come to the end of the road, but his National Review Online column is worth reading: “Time for Plan B.” »

Lost in the daily hysteria over ongoing violence in Iraq are the many signs of the progress that is steadily being made. The photo below shows an American soldier with a laptop at an internet cafe in Tikrit, one of a number of such cafes that have been opened with the assistance of American troops. Bringing the internet to Iraq is more than just a luxury or a curiosity. It »